I keep some articles around to use in an Open Thread when space allows. This one is from April 2, 2013, authored by Charles Simic for the New York Review of Books. It’s called “The New American Sadism.” (No, it’s not about S&M. Don’t even bother to unwrap those jokes.)

It starts out with health care policy and it ends up in Hell. Click the link and read the whole thing (and the TIME article). I can justify printing only two paragraphs from the beginning and two more from the end. (Personally, I’d add “only” before “profit” in the epigram below, but it’s probably not a good idea to re-edit Confucius.)

Recent political culture: Cary Grant hanging desperately from Mr. Rushmore. Current political culture: add someone up there with a jetpack, jeering at him.

Here’s Charles Simic:

The good man understands what is right,
the bad man understands profit.

—Confucius

You may have already read or heard about Steven Brill’s excellent, long article in Time magazine, called “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us.” If you think it doesn’t concern you, don’t be so sure. Brill documents how a trip to the emergency room for chest pains that turn out to be indigestion can exceed the cost of a semester of college, how simple lab work done during a few days in a hospital can be more expensive than a new car, and how a drug that requires $300 to make and that the manufacturer sells to a hospital for $3,000–3,500, can cost the patient to whom it is prescribed $13,702. He looks closely at the outrageous prices on itemized hospital bills and finds that individual services listed on them have been priced at double and triple what those same services cost separately—for reasons neither the patient understands nor the hospital can explain. And he recounts the horror stories of people reduced to penury after a brief hospital stay, even though they had some health insurance, money in the bank, and suffered from only minor ailments.

Put simply, Brill says, these bills tell us there’s no free market in our healthcare system, that hospitals set their rates knowing that someone in pain or in fear for his or her life is not going to ask to see the price list first before agreeing to some test or treatment. It’s no wonder that 60 percent of our fellow Americans who file for personal bankruptcy each year do so because of medical costs.

OK, fine — another health care article, it seems. But then, by the end, Simic has pulled out all the stops for a more sweeping and incisive (and yes, I’ll grant, a bit hyperbolic, but valuable even so) critique of our contemporary political culture. It’s about the emotional substrate behind the “fleece everyone you can” ethos that we see too often in politics — especially, I suspect, in our dear county.

In the past, even the most venal among our politicians would now and then show that they have hearts. No more. Now that money rules politics more than ever before and those for whom private gain outweighs public good every time fill the coffers of both political parties, any mention of the plight of the sick, the homeless, and the old borders on political suicide. Polls show that most Americans do not quite share the callousness of our political class to the suffering of the less fortunate members of our society. But some do. We all remember, I hope, the cheers that went up in the audience during the GOP’s presidential debate last spring in Tampa when Ron Paul, the libertarian candidate and former doctor, stated that he would let an uninsured man lying in a coma die without lifting a finger. “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk,” he said. “This whole idea that you have to compare and take care of everybody…” at which point, a few members of the audience shouted “Yeah,” cutting off the congressman in mid-sentence.

This is the new face of American sadism: the unconcealed burst of joy at the thought that pain is going to be inflicted on someone weak and helpless. Its viciousness, I believe, is symptomatic of the way our society is changing. Everything from the healthcare industry, payday loans, and for-profit prisons to the trading in so-called derivatives, privatization of public education, outsourcing of jobs, war profiteering, and hundreds of other ongoing rackets all have that same predatory quality. It’s as if this were not their own country, but some place they’ve invaded in order to loot its wealth and fleece its population without caring what happens to that population tomorrow. The only interest these profit-seekers have in us is as cheap labor, cannon fodder for wars, and suckers to be parted with our money. If we ever have a police state here, I’ve been thinking, it won’t be because we’ve become fascists overnight, but because rounding up people and locking them up will be seen as just another way to get rich. If the hell that Jonathan Edwards and other Puritan divines described in such gruesome and graphic detail is still up and running, I hope that’s where many of them are headed for.

If those are the new rules, I’ll take “political suicide,” please. Happily, it’s not usually fatal.

This is your (Long) Weekend Open Thread. Talk about the above, or anything else you’d like, within broad bounds of decency and decorum.

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose worker's rights and government accountability attorney, residing in northwest Brea. General Counsel of CATER, the Coalition of Anaheim Taxpayers for Economic Responsibility, a non-partisan group of people sick of local corruption.
Deposed as Northern Vice Chair of DPOC in April 2014 when his anti-corruption and pro-consumer work in Anaheim infuriated the Building Trades and Teamsters in spring 2014, who then worked with the lawless and power-mad DPOC Chair to eliminate his internal oversight.
Occasionally runs for office to challenge some nasty incumbent who would otherwise run unopposed. (Someday he might pick a fight with the intent to win rather than just dent someone. You'll know it when you see it.) He got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012 and in 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002.
None of his pre-putsch writings ever spoke for the Democratic Party at the local, county, state, national, or galactic level, nor do they now.
A family member co-owns a business offering campaign treasurer services to Democratic candidates and the odd independent. He is very proud of her. He doesn't directly profit from her work and it doesn't affect his coverage. (He does not always favor her clients, though she might hesitate to take one that he truly hated.)
He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.)

22 Comments

The bitter bitter disappointment here is that OJB did sneak into the top 700,000 ranks briefly this week — yes, I took a mid-week peek — but we fell back out of it due to a work stoppage. OK, a work startage, actually — both Vern and I have had a lot of work (and in his case some on-the-ground reporting!) this week. So, look for some good stuff after the holiday weekend — and I’ll put in some stories even before then to hold you over.

The five sites that have been on a pretty much continual uptick since “The Paywall Incident” — OC Weekly, Voice of OC, Huntington Beach Independent, Liberal OC, and OC Political — all continued their upwards trend. (Given that they were already starting from pretty competitive levels, the progress of the Voice and the Independent has been, as the kids say, sick. Or maybe the kids only used to say that.) Meanwhile, Pedroza’s paying to sponsor his fleet of sites on Facebook (picking up “likes” from unsuspecting readers ranging from Duane Roberts to Sharon Quirk-Silva to God-knows-who) had a good week.

The Register itself managed to stave off the ignominy of falling below the 7500 level until — well, probably just until the figures update later today. At this rate, we’re probably looking at right around 7800 by the end of June — and then 8000 a few days after. The further they slip, the easier it is to fall. The LA Times‘s ranking isn’t affected much by a drop of, say, 1000 hits per week; for a publication around 33,000, like the Weekly, a drop of 1000 hits may push then back quite a bit more.

Why does this matter? Every week, the ranking of Register gets further from the Times and closer to the Weekly.

My bill was $247,000 for a 9 day hospital stay and a zillion tests. My neurological specialist doctor visit… 20 minutes total with an intern and himself was $1,000. He never touched me, only reviewed past doctor notes and I told him my symptoms…final diagnosis? “I don’t know”…priceless! I negotiated a lower bill and I am still paying it off.

I sit with patients getting chemo and I spoke with a few who probably will not live as long as they hoped. They feel guilty for having gotten sick…they will leave their spouses with so much medical debt, the surviving spouses will probably file for bankruptcy and they have health insurance.

The cost of ONE chemo treatment…. $8,000 that’s only for the drug…not the bag it comes in, nurses, treatment room, etc. Most insured patients are required to pay 20% no matter what the drug is until they reach deductible.

I just saw the greatest unexpected thing on TV – I had the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions on, since there were guests over and that seemed like something nobody would mind – and the greatest thing was the acceptance speech of Rush’s lead guitarist Alex Lifeson, about 5 minutes long, and consisting only of the words “BLA BLA BLA.” I gotta go see if I can find it on YouTube for you all!

The Voice of Russia says:
US congressman Dana Rohrabacher believes that the US security services failed to prevent the terrorist act during a marathon in Boston because people from these services still have rudiments of the Cold War mentality.

If US security services trusted Russia more, they would have cooperated with it closely, which would have probably made them have a close watch on the Tsornaev brothers, the congressman said. Islamist terrorism is a threat to the entire world, and the world should join its efforts in fighting against it, he added.

Yeah, well what about political leaders who want to pretend like we’re still fighting a Cold War. This problem doesn’t fall ONLY on the shoulders of our intelligence services (although it’s becoming clear that the CIA wields far too much power in DC).

I mean, aren’t you tired of people like John McCain and Lyndsey Graham going around with an itchy trigger finger trying to find the next war we can be in?

The former head of the IRS visited the White House more times than any Cabinet member, according to an analysis by The Daily Caller, raising questions about the nature of those visits — particularly around the time the agency was targeting conservative groups.

The Caller analysis of White House visitor logs showed former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times under the Obama administration.

Even Attorney General Eric Holder, one of Obama’s closest allies, visited only 62 times according to the records

The vast majority of the visits (ie. 40 visits to Nancy DeParle and 54 visits to Sarah Fenn) were to people very involved in planning for the implementation of Obamacare. The IRS is going to be the primary entity responsible for determining who is eligible for the plans and subsidies that will be available. The start of the exchanges is fast approaching. There’s a lot of planning going on.

Visiting the White House does not necessarily mean you’re meeting with the President.

This is what happens when some people (ahem, clears throat) too readily lend credence to ideologically-driven “journalism.”

“The Daily Caller story that kicked off the latest round of finger-pointing and blame in the IRS “scandal” currently gripping the right blogosphere and Fox News was actually based on erroneous information.”